I've got a very irritating problem with IE6. For starters, it takes between 20 to 30 seconds to launch after I click on the shortcut to it. Also, if the site happens to have any popups, IE will lock up until the popups come up, which is often quite lengthy. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with javascript because anytime I click on a javascript link it takes forever to come up and IE is locked until it does.
It doesn't have anything to do with my connection speed because I have a cable modem and many sites load instantly if IE is already up and running. Navigator 7 also runs flawlessly and very fast on my system. I'm having this same problem on 2 different computers, both running WinXP Pro. Just wondering if anybody else has heard of this problem or may know what is going on.

For what it's worth, I'm running WinXP Home (European Edition) with IE 6.0.lots of other numbers. I don't have this problem. Sometimes the whole Internet is slow, I guess when my (cable broadband) ISP is busy, but I've never had it wait for a pop-up to load.

Have you tried restoring the defaults (if they were changed) in Internet Options?

In your browser window:

Click on Tools > Internet Options...
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on Restore Defaults

Down at the bottom of the list, under Microsoft VM, the box next to JIT compiler for virtual machine enabled is checked (I believe that is the default). This might help...

...otherwise, there is a really good freeware program (I use it) that can help with the pop-ups. You can get POW! right here. It allows you to selectively choose the pop-ups to kill. Once you enter the pop-up/under into the list, it kills it immediately the next time you come across it. This program is different, in that it doesn't just kill all pop-ups and it also kills pop-unders.

Hopefully, this information will help a little, if not entirely. Someone else will most likely be along with better information.